Enel acquires Tynemouth battery energy storage project in UK

The Italian electricity utility has purchased Tynemouth Energy Storage Limited (TESL), which was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Element Power and owns the Tynemouth BESS project. The value of the transaction was not disclosed.

Enel’s global thermal generation division will develop the construction-ready project, which will use a lithium-ion battery with a capacity of 25MW (12.5 MWh).

The Italian company's ebtire investment in the project, including construction, is expected to total about €20m.

The Tynemouth project will be supported by a four-year enhanced frequency response (EFR) contract from the National Grid, under which it will offer grid balancing services.

The project will participate to ancillary services and capacity market tenders after four years.

Enel global thermal generation division head Enrico Viale said: “This transaction marks an important step forward in the growth of our Group in the promising and innovative sector of the stand-alone battery energy storage systems.

“Due to the increasing role of renewable energy sources, the growing need of grid balancing services and the fast reduction of technology costs, the BESS market is expected to grow exponentially in all geographies in the next years.

“For this reason, Tynemouth represents for Enel an opportunity to gain experience and strategic knowledge in building such projects, which can then be applied to other markets.”

According to industry analysts, the UK is expected to install around 700MW of different kind of storage projects by 2021.